For those of you who have visited either the Stampboards or Stamp Community forums in the last couple weeks, you may be aware that two of the most important names in the philatelic world, Stanley Gibbons and Amos Publishing (publisher of the Scott line of albums and catalogs in the USA) have both been having very trying periods.
In the case of Amos, it seems to be a massive technical failure that has completely eliminated their presence on the internet. Going to the main Amos Advantage website only results in an error message and a note saying that the company hopes to be back online soon. But for now, access to the products produced by Amos for the philatelic community via the publisher's own website is completely cut off. With the holiday season rapidly approaching, hopefully these technical issues will be resolved soon, since I am sure that Amos, like most retailers, depend on holiday sales for a significant portion of their business.
While Amos grapples with internet gremlins of the first order, a much more potentially serious problem is growing for the British philatelic institution Stanley Gibbons. A few years back new owners of the comany decided to take Gibbons into the world of Stocks, floating what had been a private company with what was, at the time, a fairly successful Initial Public Offer. The management at Gibbons then began aggressively marketing the Gibbons company as an opportunity for investors in rare philatelic collectibles, promoting the idea that philatelic items could be a good alternative investment in an age of low returns due to the very low interest rates available in the West, and the uncertainty caused by the rapid gyrations of stock markets since the start of the 2008 Global economic crisis.
The year 2015 will likely go down as Gibbons "annus horribilis" in terms of its decision to travel down the investment pathway. Investors have not invested to the degree imagined, and the auction market for the type of high-end UK and Commonwealth material that is the bedrock of Gibbons inventory has been flat at best and losing value in some areas. Gibbons stock, which started the year with a value of over UKP 3.00 per share, has now fallen to below UKP 0.90, a nearly 75% drop in value.
The fundamentals of the Gibbons company do not augur well for a recovery any time soon. It's internet presence via the Bidstart marketplace (which Gibbons purchases a couple years back hoping to increase its internet-based retail presence) is dire and going through yet another revamping. Profits have not met market expectations, and the result has been a steeping downward slide in the value of the stock. Parts of the Gibbons empire, such as the Catalog business, remain vibrant, but that branch alone can not support a company whose marketplace ambitions may simply have been too big for the resources at its disposal. Hopefully Gibbons will be able to turn things around, reorganize itself around its core philatelic business, and seriously rethink the idea of being a vehicle to promote stamps as an "investment opportunity" for those seeking a quick profit. Hopefully this can be achieved without Gibbons having to be "liquidated" in wake of further profit losses, but its unclear just how much lower Gibbons' stock price can go before the marketplace starts to consider that the most likely option.
For collectors in North America, there is a little solace in knowing that Amos Publishing is a privately-held company, so much less subject to the whims and pressures of a financial market that prioritizes short-term profit over long-term potential for growth. As disconcerting as the longer than expected resolution of Amos' technical issues is, these issues should be resolvable in the end, and hopefully the financial cost to Amos will not have been too egregious. If Amos was in Gibbons' position as a publicly-traded company, the potential for investor flight gravely damaging the economic health of the company due to this technical crisis would probably have been immense.
I am not anti-capitalist by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes keeping a company privately owned is a better option for the long-term health of the company instead of exposing the company to the whims of the global financial marketplace. I personally think the experience of Gibbons as a publicly-traded company illustrates the great risks that any company involved in collectibles faces. In the end, philately really should never be seen as an investment tool, but rather for what it is, an enjoyable hobby that, perhaps over the long term, can also be profitable to the collector with a bit of luck, patience and time.
Showing posts with label Scott. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Scott. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
The "democratization" of philatelic retail - the impact of the internet on the philatelic marketplace....
Over at the Stamp Community Forum there has been a lively debate going on regarding the impact of ebay and other online marketplaces upon the business side of the hobby. The discussion started with the question "Can dealers compete with ebay?" and has ranges across several related topics, as is the want of a forum thread that is already eight pages long.
My reply to the question was that the question was asking the wrong thing. It's not a question of dealers competing with ebay, but rather "Should dealers consider using ebay as a platform for their business" Ebay itself is simply a tool, a digital marketplace where buyers and sellers can meet in cyberspace and exchange goods.
Which raises a separate question. Is there a difference in the terms dealer and seller?
A question of semantics to be sure. I would say anyone who is offering to sell stamps, in any marketplace, is a dealer. Others would seem to prefer to "rarify" the term dealer by restricting it only to those who make a professional living from their business. For those who only do a little business on the side, they would argue that -seller- is a better term. And in the end, the "sellers" on ebay are making it much more difficult for many "dealers" to make a living.
This observation then leads to the actual heart of the issue at question - the decline in value of most stamps over the past decade. And here it would be wise to not separate the two groups into "dealers" and "sellers" because they are all doing the same thing : offering stamps for sale to buyers.
If we think about how the business of philately operated say back in the 1980s (yes I am sure that is ancient history for some readers of this blog, who may not have even been alive then. Me I was a teenager, working on my stamp collection while listening to Bon Jovi, Miami Sound Machine and Heart on the radio). You had your local stamp dealers if you lived in a large enough metropolitan area. You had dealers who advertised in publications such as Linn's Stamp News. But unless you travelled a great deal around the country, it was often difficult to find stamp dealers who might have the material you are looking for. You could write to those dealers who placed ads in the various philatelic publications, but in general the total number of people selling stamps in the 1980s was fairly small, and in general the demand for stamps equaled the supply available (or seemingly only available) through dealers. In that retail environment, most stamps tended to rise in price slowly, and some that would become -hot- issues could rise very fast very quickly, as anyone who remembers the US stamp bubble of the late 1970s can attest. Philatelic retail was, I would argue, controlled by an "oligarchy" of dealers, many of whom were quite chummy with each other and would rarely move to undersell their product verses a competing dealer.
Then came the internet, and all the rules of philatelic retail were changed. Philatelic retail became "democratized" and the benefit has been to the buyer at the expense of the dealer.
Today, the ability of the buyer to "comparison shop" between different dealers of stamps is so much, much greater than it was in the 1980s. And, with the ease the internet provides to allow anyone to become a purveyor of stamps (compared to the days when most dealers had huge overhead in the cost of a shop, the cost of advertising, etc) it means the potential for a large number of retailers to join the marketplace now existed The result is that today there is now a lot greater supply of stamps in the marketplace for purchase than there was in the 1980s. What might have been 20 dealers in the USA offering stamp X for sale via local channels and, perhaps, an advertisement in a national publication, now has become 200 dealers of offering the same stamp, and the buyer can compare prices with just a few keyboard clicks.
The one problem with this of course is that demand for many stamps has not kept pace with the increase in availability of supply in the marketplace. This is especially true for the "meat and potatoes" type of stamps - those stamps that were always worth more than being packet material back in the 1980s, but they were not so rare as to be nearly unobtainable unless you had deep pockets. It turns out that these "meat and potato" stamps exist in sufficient quantity that if you have more sellers offering to sell the item than buyers to buy them, the value of the stamp is going to decrease in the marketplace. This is especially the case for the stamps of Western Europe and North America where demand is weak due to the lack of new collectors of the stamps of the West and the vast quantities of most stamps printed at time of issue. Many stamps are now selling at a percent below face value in the marketplace because they are so common and demand is so weak for them. Countries that were -hot- in the 1980s like Germany have in particular been hit hard. A perusal of the Scott Catalogs and comparing prices clearly illustrates this - most of the "meat and potato" stamps have either remained stagnant or declined in catalog value over the past decade.
Meanwhile those stamps that always have been rare due to limited quantity in desired conditions continue to this day to increase in value because there will never be enough supply to meet demand. High quality pre-1930 USA issues, for example, continue to rise in value if they are in above average condition. And of course one can not forget the impact of booms and bubbles in in philately. While the Chinese stamp market did decline a bit over the past couple years due to China's own internal economic weakness, the days when Chinese stamps of the pre-1990 era sold just above face value are never going to come back either, as it seems the supply of these issues is much less than the demand even when you factor out speculation.
Dealers who do not make use of sites such as ebay, Delcampe, Zillions of Stamps and others here I think really are making a grave business error. These platforms provide an audience of millions of potential collectors from around the world that the dealer would never have been able to reach had the structure of the retail trade remained the same as it was in the 1980s. The cold hard reality is that the marketplace is now much, much bigger than it was, and as the amount of supply has grown faster than the demand for stamps from collectors, the laws of supply and demand work to the benefit of the buyer. And this will remain the case until a new equilibrium between supply and demand is reached. It is a whole new retail ballgame in philately, and the days of the stationary retail brick-and-mortar stamp shop are probably numbered. A dealer with the cost of overhead such as owning a retail space is going to find it difficult to compete with a dealer selling items from the comfort of his or her home.
My reply to the question was that the question was asking the wrong thing. It's not a question of dealers competing with ebay, but rather "Should dealers consider using ebay as a platform for their business" Ebay itself is simply a tool, a digital marketplace where buyers and sellers can meet in cyberspace and exchange goods.
Which raises a separate question. Is there a difference in the terms dealer and seller?
A question of semantics to be sure. I would say anyone who is offering to sell stamps, in any marketplace, is a dealer. Others would seem to prefer to "rarify" the term dealer by restricting it only to those who make a professional living from their business. For those who only do a little business on the side, they would argue that -seller- is a better term. And in the end, the "sellers" on ebay are making it much more difficult for many "dealers" to make a living.
This observation then leads to the actual heart of the issue at question - the decline in value of most stamps over the past decade. And here it would be wise to not separate the two groups into "dealers" and "sellers" because they are all doing the same thing : offering stamps for sale to buyers.
If we think about how the business of philately operated say back in the 1980s (yes I am sure that is ancient history for some readers of this blog, who may not have even been alive then. Me I was a teenager, working on my stamp collection while listening to Bon Jovi, Miami Sound Machine and Heart on the radio). You had your local stamp dealers if you lived in a large enough metropolitan area. You had dealers who advertised in publications such as Linn's Stamp News. But unless you travelled a great deal around the country, it was often difficult to find stamp dealers who might have the material you are looking for. You could write to those dealers who placed ads in the various philatelic publications, but in general the total number of people selling stamps in the 1980s was fairly small, and in general the demand for stamps equaled the supply available (or seemingly only available) through dealers. In that retail environment, most stamps tended to rise in price slowly, and some that would become -hot- issues could rise very fast very quickly, as anyone who remembers the US stamp bubble of the late 1970s can attest. Philatelic retail was, I would argue, controlled by an "oligarchy" of dealers, many of whom were quite chummy with each other and would rarely move to undersell their product verses a competing dealer.
Then came the internet, and all the rules of philatelic retail were changed. Philatelic retail became "democratized" and the benefit has been to the buyer at the expense of the dealer.
Today, the ability of the buyer to "comparison shop" between different dealers of stamps is so much, much greater than it was in the 1980s. And, with the ease the internet provides to allow anyone to become a purveyor of stamps (compared to the days when most dealers had huge overhead in the cost of a shop, the cost of advertising, etc) it means the potential for a large number of retailers to join the marketplace now existed The result is that today there is now a lot greater supply of stamps in the marketplace for purchase than there was in the 1980s. What might have been 20 dealers in the USA offering stamp X for sale via local channels and, perhaps, an advertisement in a national publication, now has become 200 dealers of offering the same stamp, and the buyer can compare prices with just a few keyboard clicks.
The one problem with this of course is that demand for many stamps has not kept pace with the increase in availability of supply in the marketplace. This is especially true for the "meat and potatoes" type of stamps - those stamps that were always worth more than being packet material back in the 1980s, but they were not so rare as to be nearly unobtainable unless you had deep pockets. It turns out that these "meat and potato" stamps exist in sufficient quantity that if you have more sellers offering to sell the item than buyers to buy them, the value of the stamp is going to decrease in the marketplace. This is especially the case for the stamps of Western Europe and North America where demand is weak due to the lack of new collectors of the stamps of the West and the vast quantities of most stamps printed at time of issue. Many stamps are now selling at a percent below face value in the marketplace because they are so common and demand is so weak for them. Countries that were -hot- in the 1980s like Germany have in particular been hit hard. A perusal of the Scott Catalogs and comparing prices clearly illustrates this - most of the "meat and potato" stamps have either remained stagnant or declined in catalog value over the past decade.
Meanwhile those stamps that always have been rare due to limited quantity in desired conditions continue to this day to increase in value because there will never be enough supply to meet demand. High quality pre-1930 USA issues, for example, continue to rise in value if they are in above average condition. And of course one can not forget the impact of booms and bubbles in in philately. While the Chinese stamp market did decline a bit over the past couple years due to China's own internal economic weakness, the days when Chinese stamps of the pre-1990 era sold just above face value are never going to come back either, as it seems the supply of these issues is much less than the demand even when you factor out speculation.
Dealers who do not make use of sites such as ebay, Delcampe, Zillions of Stamps and others here I think really are making a grave business error. These platforms provide an audience of millions of potential collectors from around the world that the dealer would never have been able to reach had the structure of the retail trade remained the same as it was in the 1980s. The cold hard reality is that the marketplace is now much, much bigger than it was, and as the amount of supply has grown faster than the demand for stamps from collectors, the laws of supply and demand work to the benefit of the buyer. And this will remain the case until a new equilibrium between supply and demand is reached. It is a whole new retail ballgame in philately, and the days of the stationary retail brick-and-mortar stamp shop are probably numbered. A dealer with the cost of overhead such as owning a retail space is going to find it difficult to compete with a dealer selling items from the comfort of his or her home.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
The Future of Scott Catalogs - Take The Survey!!
A couple days ago Amos Publishing sent out a survey form via various dealers to survey the philatelic community about how they would like to see the Scott Catalogs organized in the future. The current six-volume general catalog has apparently reached its size limit, and Scott is going to have to choose either to expand the existing format into more volumes or perhaps re-arrange the organization of the catalogs along geographic and historic lines (much as Stanley Gibbons, Michel and Yvert et Tellier already do for their catalogs).
Thankfully the publishers in their email included a link to their survey and permission to share the link, and a kind soul at the Stampboards Forum posted it. Since this is something that I think every collector who uses Scott catalogs even on a casual basis should be participating in, I have decided to put the link to the survey here below.
Scott Catalogue Collector Survey
It's not a long survey, and at the end you have a chance to register to win a copy of the Scott Classic Specialized Stamp Catalog 1840-1940.
The one thing that the survey does NOT address is the question of digital versions of the Scott Catalogs. This is a shame, since digital reference really is the future for hobbies such as philately. Collectors my age (I am 44) and younger are very much wired into the digital world, and really live our lives connected to the internet.
While the survey does not directly address digital versions, it does offer respondants a space to leave further comments and opinions. My suggestion to those who believe Amos Publishing need to bring the Scott Catalogs fully into the twenty-first century is to fill this section out with what you think the optimal digital version of a Scott Catalog would be.
On my part, I suggested the following ideas
In any case, take a few minutes to fill out the Scott survey and let your voice be heard!!
Thankfully the publishers in their email included a link to their survey and permission to share the link, and a kind soul at the Stampboards Forum posted it. Since this is something that I think every collector who uses Scott catalogs even on a casual basis should be participating in, I have decided to put the link to the survey here below.
Scott Catalogue Collector Survey
It's not a long survey, and at the end you have a chance to register to win a copy of the Scott Classic Specialized Stamp Catalog 1840-1940.
The one thing that the survey does NOT address is the question of digital versions of the Scott Catalogs. This is a shame, since digital reference really is the future for hobbies such as philately. Collectors my age (I am 44) and younger are very much wired into the digital world, and really live our lives connected to the internet.
While the survey does not directly address digital versions, it does offer respondants a space to leave further comments and opinions. My suggestion to those who believe Amos Publishing need to bring the Scott Catalogs fully into the twenty-first century is to fill this section out with what you think the optimal digital version of a Scott Catalog would be.
On my part, I suggested the following ideas
- regional organization similar to SG, Michel and Yvert Catalogs
- fully functional search feature within catalogs based on keyword
- clear digital images of all stamps listed, not just one -sample- design as currently in the Scott Catalogs
- ability to use the product offline for those occasions when one is at a show or bourse and there is either poor Wi-Fi access or none at all.
- My last suggestion would probably be controversial : allow those who buy the digital version of the catalogs be able to have a low-price point subscription model that would allow automatic updates of content (such as adding new issues once they are given Scott numbers) and the ability to purchase new editions of the full catalog at a reduced price. This is roughly similar to the model my favorite gaming company, Paradox Interactive in Sweden, follows for its historical strategy game - you buy the game, get free patches to fix errors, access to some free new peripheral content, and then ability to purchase new updated versions with more changed and new content at a price lower than the original game. This is a model that works well for gaming, and I think would work well here for Amos Publishing to make the Scott Catalogs the best catalog for stamp collectors going forward into the twenty-first century.
In any case, take a few minutes to fill out the Scott survey and let your voice be heard!!
Saturday, August 1, 2015
My current catalogue library...and my love of specialized catalogues!
As my last post indicates, I have quite a few specialized catalogues in my collection. I LOVE specialized catalogues. Part of the reason is due to the sheer number of varieties you often find listed, which makes shopping for stamps all the more fun if you have the chance to find a variety that is only listed in specialized catalogues in the stock of a dealer who does not know. To quote Glen Stephens, the moderator of collection forum Stampboards, "Knowledge is POWER". Another reason I love specialized catalogues is that it lets me set up my albums to include spaces for all known varieties. No, I may not ever own many of them, but one can always dream, and there is always the thrill of the chase.
And finally, for collectors in the USA, the realization that Scott does not list many items that would be considered basic issues in other countries is a frustration that only the overseas specialized catalogues can redress, at least until such time as Scott finally provides listings in its Classic Specialized Catalogue. One of my current bugaboos with Scott is its complete failure to list the Parcel Post stamps of Algeria. First released in 1899 (twenty-five years before the first Algerian-specific postage stamps) the Parcel Post (or as the French say, Colis Postaux) issues have a strong following in France and are considered a basic part of any Algerian collection, and the Maury catalogue lists almost 220 major number varieties (and lots of minor varieties to boot!)
The oddest thing about this Algerian parcel post question is that Scott DOES list similar parcel post issues for mainland France, which were added to the Classic Specialized catalogue in I believe 2012. So for Scott not to list the Algerian issues is even more anachronistic now than it was when the French parcels were not listed either. Scott editors, if you read this, please consider listing these issues - there is plenty of market data available!
So what do I have in my library currently. Here is the current listing :
And finally, for collectors in the USA, the realization that Scott does not list many items that would be considered basic issues in other countries is a frustration that only the overseas specialized catalogues can redress, at least until such time as Scott finally provides listings in its Classic Specialized Catalogue. One of my current bugaboos with Scott is its complete failure to list the Parcel Post stamps of Algeria. First released in 1899 (twenty-five years before the first Algerian-specific postage stamps) the Parcel Post (or as the French say, Colis Postaux) issues have a strong following in France and are considered a basic part of any Algerian collection, and the Maury catalogue lists almost 220 major number varieties (and lots of minor varieties to boot!)
A selection of Algerian parcel post stamps from a Delcampe listing. Just don't spend time looking in the Scott catalogue for them!
So what do I have in my library currently. Here is the current listing :
- Scott 2015 Classic Specialized Catalogue 1840-1940
- A complete set of 2012 Scott General Catalogues - all 6 volumes
- 2009 Scott US Specialized Catalogue (I will probably get a newer version this year)
- Maury Timbres de France 2011 edition
- Maury Timbres de l'ex-empire français en Afrique 2006 edition (I wanted to update to the 2014 edition but it has gone out of print already!)
- Maury Timbres des bureaux et anciennes colonies français en Europe et Asie, 2011 edition
- Maury Timbres des DOM-TOM 2009 edition (catalogue for the current Departments and Territoires d'Outre-Mer, except St Pierre & Miquelon and French Antarctica, which are in #8)
- Maury Timbres des Principautes et Terres Polaires, 2011 edition
- İsfila Türk Pulları Kataloğu 2014 edition
- GJ Catálogo Especializado de Sellos de la Republica Argentina 2009 edition
- Stanley Gibbons Specialized Australia Catalogue, 9th edition
- Stanley Gibbons Specialized New Zealand Catalogue, 5th edition
- Stanley Gibbons Specialized Brunei-Malaysia-Singapore Catalogue, 4th edition
- Afinsa Catalogo de Sellos Postais : Portugal, Açores e Madeira, 2005 edition
- Afinsa Catalogo de Sellos Postais : Portugal, Açores e Madeira 2000-2012 supplement
- Afinsa Catalogo de Sellos Postais : Colonias Portuguesas, 2011 edition.
Unfortunately the Afinsa catalogues are no longer produced as the publisher went bankrupt in wake of the Afinsa Ponzi Scheme Scandal but copies can be found in the second-hand market with a little searching. Maury no longer lists catalogues on its own website, my guess is all the latest editions are out of print as well, though again the aftermarket will have copies.
Over time I am sure my collection of specialized catalogues will grow. I desperately want a copy of the Unitrade Specialized Catalogue of Canadian Stamps but the current 2015 edition is out of print, though the 2016 edition should be available in late 2015 and that will be purchased this year!
You may be thinking wow how can he use all these catalogues, most are not in English! Well, I fortunately have fair to good reading ability in nine different languages (French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Turkish, Arabic and Persian) as a result of years of training as a graduate student in Islamic History at Ohio State. But, I find that most catalogues are organized in such a way that someone with little foreign language knowledge can, with the help of online translators, get the main jist of what the catalogues are saying.
The great debate....hinged vs never hinged...and the evil legacy of Crystal Mounts....
It's a debate that has rumbled through philatelic circles since at least the 1950s (famous US Stamp Dealer and author Herman Herst Jr wrote about it in many of his articles, collections of which have been published as Nassau Street and Fun And Profit In Stamp Collecting and both of which are entertaining and educational reads well worth checking out!). Should mint stamps be collected as hinged or never hinged. Or perhaps more to the point, at what point chronologically should a collector stop collecting mint hinged stamps and only seek out never hinged copies of issues.
A look at stamp catalogues from various regions is little help as none seem to agree to any date in particular. Generally, Scott sets its values for mint as never hinged for most nations around 1945 or so. Some countries a little later, some (like the USA) in the 1930s. Scott also, at least in its Classic Specialized 1840-1940 Catalog, provides pricing for never hinged for issues before their cutoff date. One thing Scott very rarely does though is price items, or even give a rough guide to value, for hinged items AFTER the transition date. Does this mean hinged items issued after the transition date are worthless???? Surely it can't, but how do you value the items if there is no guide, even a rough one.
Other catalogues, as I note above, use different dates. The Gibbons catalogs make the transition form hinged to never hinged with the coronation of George VI in 1937. Again, no guide is provided as to what kind of a discount should be given for items issued after 1937 that are hinged, and even more perplexing, neither is any suggestion of a degree of premium never hinged items issues before 1937. At least none is given in the three specialized Gibbons catalogues I own (Australia 9th ed, New Zealand 5th ed and Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei 4th ed).
Since I am focusing at this time mainly on the French colonial world, I also have a set of Maury catalogues for France and empire. Here there IS some help, as Maury prices everything from start to its general transition date of 1960 in both never hinged and hinged varieties. Interestingly enough, the degree of premium for Never Hinged items in the later 1950s vs hinged is not that large, usually around 33% or so. After 1960 prices for mint stamps are for never hinged only, though one could argue that the discount should not be too huge for hinged if the examples of the late 1950s pricing ratios are taken into consideration. Similarly the Afinsa catalogues for Portugal and Colonies offer pricing for both never hinged and hinged stamps up to 1953 and the Centenary of Portuguese Stamps issue. The İsfila catalogue for the Ottoman Empire and Turkey sets the date at 1938, while the Guillermo Jalil catalogue for Argentina sets it at 1940, with both catalogues providing pricing guidance for never-hinged items issues before their transition dates, though not after.
Stamp mounts only began to become common in the USA with the introduction of the Crystal Mount by the HE Harris company in the 1950s, though there were some predecessors that, to be honest, were more work than worth the effort to use. I remember Crystal Mounts well, since that is what my father used when he introduced me to stamp collecting in the 1970s and 1980s. I remember spending many an snowy upstate NY evening helping him mount his various collections with these mounts, that only came in a small range of sizes so that one had to fold over part of the mount to secure the stamp inside.
Crystal Mounts in their packaging from the 1980s...images that bring shudders of horror to me today.
Until the introduction of mounts based around stamp height in a much larger range of sizes (such as the Scott Mount by Prinz and similar mounts) these were considered the best mount for keeping stamps never hinged. And millions of US collectors used them in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s (and some still swear by them)
(rant) I truly LOATHE Crystal Mounts (/rant). It was always way too easy to bend perfs as you folded over the extra plastic, and stamps often have a hard time "breathing" when they are in tightly folded ones. When I inherited my father's stamp collection, I discovered that removing stamps from mounts was rather akin to extracting a coin that has fallen thru a grate - often frustrating and infuriating. You need to be very careful removing the stamps from a Crystal Mount, and you often need to put it under some weight afterward to remove the -curl- that the mounts often create after years of storage. Really poorly stored collections housed in Crystal mounts often have yellow staining where the gummed strip was positioned, and occasionally the gum will even glaze from moisture trapped over time.
When I was heavily building up my first stamp collection in the 1990s, I used the traditional album pages and Scott Mounts, as I've noted in my first post. At times it felt like I was spending as much on supplies as I was on stamps. But this time around I have decided to use Lighthouse Vario stockpages and it is so wonderful NOT to have to factor the cost of mounts into my stamp budget AT ALL. Although they have come down in price from what they were in the 1980s when I was trying to convince my father to switch to Scott mount and stop using Crystal mounts (an arugment he eventually came to accept in the early 1990s) they are still not cheap especially when you consider the range of sizes you need if you are a worldwide collector.
But back to the original question - hinged or never hinged. In the end, this is something that each collector has to decide for himself or herself. De gustibus non disputatum est. My general rule of thumb is hinged is fine until 1960, and from 1960 onward I will only buy never hinged issues. By 1960 you really have huge supplies of never hinged material for most nations available in the marketplace here in the USA, and stamp mounts by 1960 were much more commonly in use. Some nations I may make the never-hinged only transition a bit earlier, but 1960 is, for me, a pretty firm date for all nations. Now, if given the opportunity to purchase pre-1960 material in never hinged form at a fair price, then I will not turn my nose up at it either, but for me at least, there is nothing wrong with a hinged stamp, provided that the hinging by previous owners has not done any major physical damage to the stamp over the years, such as thins on the back. For my part, so long as the stamp remains in my possession, I will not harm it further with another hinge. But let us be honest, we admire our stamps for the designs on the front, not to fetishize the pristine-ness of the gum on the back.
A look at stamp catalogues from various regions is little help as none seem to agree to any date in particular. Generally, Scott sets its values for mint as never hinged for most nations around 1945 or so. Some countries a little later, some (like the USA) in the 1930s. Scott also, at least in its Classic Specialized 1840-1940 Catalog, provides pricing for never hinged for issues before their cutoff date. One thing Scott very rarely does though is price items, or even give a rough guide to value, for hinged items AFTER the transition date. Does this mean hinged items issued after the transition date are worthless???? Surely it can't, but how do you value the items if there is no guide, even a rough one.
Other catalogues, as I note above, use different dates. The Gibbons catalogs make the transition form hinged to never hinged with the coronation of George VI in 1937. Again, no guide is provided as to what kind of a discount should be given for items issued after 1937 that are hinged, and even more perplexing, neither is any suggestion of a degree of premium never hinged items issues before 1937. At least none is given in the three specialized Gibbons catalogues I own (Australia 9th ed, New Zealand 5th ed and Malaysia-Singapore-Brunei 4th ed).
Since I am focusing at this time mainly on the French colonial world, I also have a set of Maury catalogues for France and empire. Here there IS some help, as Maury prices everything from start to its general transition date of 1960 in both never hinged and hinged varieties. Interestingly enough, the degree of premium for Never Hinged items in the later 1950s vs hinged is not that large, usually around 33% or so. After 1960 prices for mint stamps are for never hinged only, though one could argue that the discount should not be too huge for hinged if the examples of the late 1950s pricing ratios are taken into consideration. Similarly the Afinsa catalogues for Portugal and Colonies offer pricing for both never hinged and hinged stamps up to 1953 and the Centenary of Portuguese Stamps issue. The İsfila catalogue for the Ottoman Empire and Turkey sets the date at 1938, while the Guillermo Jalil catalogue for Argentina sets it at 1940, with both catalogues providing pricing guidance for never-hinged items issues before their transition dates, though not after.
Stamp mounts only began to become common in the USA with the introduction of the Crystal Mount by the HE Harris company in the 1950s, though there were some predecessors that, to be honest, were more work than worth the effort to use. I remember Crystal Mounts well, since that is what my father used when he introduced me to stamp collecting in the 1970s and 1980s. I remember spending many an snowy upstate NY evening helping him mount his various collections with these mounts, that only came in a small range of sizes so that one had to fold over part of the mount to secure the stamp inside.
Crystal Mounts in their packaging from the 1980s...images that bring shudders of horror to me today.
Until the introduction of mounts based around stamp height in a much larger range of sizes (such as the Scott Mount by Prinz and similar mounts) these were considered the best mount for keeping stamps never hinged. And millions of US collectors used them in the period from the 1950s to the 1980s (and some still swear by them)
(rant) I truly LOATHE Crystal Mounts (/rant). It was always way too easy to bend perfs as you folded over the extra plastic, and stamps often have a hard time "breathing" when they are in tightly folded ones. When I inherited my father's stamp collection, I discovered that removing stamps from mounts was rather akin to extracting a coin that has fallen thru a grate - often frustrating and infuriating. You need to be very careful removing the stamps from a Crystal Mount, and you often need to put it under some weight afterward to remove the -curl- that the mounts often create after years of storage. Really poorly stored collections housed in Crystal mounts often have yellow staining where the gummed strip was positioned, and occasionally the gum will even glaze from moisture trapped over time.
When I was heavily building up my first stamp collection in the 1990s, I used the traditional album pages and Scott Mounts, as I've noted in my first post. At times it felt like I was spending as much on supplies as I was on stamps. But this time around I have decided to use Lighthouse Vario stockpages and it is so wonderful NOT to have to factor the cost of mounts into my stamp budget AT ALL. Although they have come down in price from what they were in the 1980s when I was trying to convince my father to switch to Scott mount and stop using Crystal mounts (an arugment he eventually came to accept in the early 1990s) they are still not cheap especially when you consider the range of sizes you need if you are a worldwide collector.
But back to the original question - hinged or never hinged. In the end, this is something that each collector has to decide for himself or herself. De gustibus non disputatum est. My general rule of thumb is hinged is fine until 1960, and from 1960 onward I will only buy never hinged issues. By 1960 you really have huge supplies of never hinged material for most nations available in the marketplace here in the USA, and stamp mounts by 1960 were much more commonly in use. Some nations I may make the never-hinged only transition a bit earlier, but 1960 is, for me, a pretty firm date for all nations. Now, if given the opportunity to purchase pre-1960 material in never hinged form at a fair price, then I will not turn my nose up at it either, but for me at least, there is nothing wrong with a hinged stamp, provided that the hinging by previous owners has not done any major physical damage to the stamp over the years, such as thins on the back. For my part, so long as the stamp remains in my possession, I will not harm it further with another hinge. But let us be honest, we admire our stamps for the designs on the front, not to fetishize the pristine-ness of the gum on the back.
Friday, July 31, 2015
Organizing collections....my preferences.
On the wonderful Stampboards forum there is an interesting thread in the main discussion thread regarding how best to organize a worldwide collection. My personal preference is to organize based on contemporary nations, with colonial issues placed as part of the historical record. This can get a bit complicated for some nations due to name changes, colonial overship changes and the like. For me, the criteria for what gets put in which country is based on where the administrative center for the entity was located. In practice this means you can have two or more stamp issuing entities as part of the same collection, based on the history of that nation. So, for example :
Senegal was a French colony that issued its own stamps starting in 1886. In 1944, the French decided to simplify the postal administration of their West African holding by issuing stamps inscribed -Afrique Occidentale Francaise- (French West Africa) for all eight of their West African colonies, including Senegal. The center of administration for French West Africa was at Dakar in Senegal, so I include these issues in my Senegal collection. Then the "Winds of Change" blew across Africa and in 1960 Senegal and the French Sudan formed the short-lived independent Federation of Mali before splitting into the independent nations of Senegal and Mali. Though catalogs generally list the issues of the Federation of Mali as the first issues of Mali, I personally place the Federation issues of 1959-1960 in with Senegal since the adminstrative center was in Dakar. So my Senegal album contains in reality four different postal administrations :
Colonial Senegal (1886-1944)
French West Africa (1944-1958)
Federation of Mali (1959-1960)
Independent Senegal (since 1960)
Of course, my academic background as a historian probably explains why I choose this kind of organization!
Speaking of albums, how do I store my collections. In my first philatelic life before I sold my collection to fund a business venture, I used traditional pages and mounts (I hate hinges with a passion, and would mount hinged stamps in mounts, figuring the poor hinged stamps had suffered enough damage already and did not need any more during my stewardship of their possesion. I had a complete set of Scott Internationals, Brown Vintage Reproduction pages for up to 1940, and then all the volumes up to 2001.
When I returned to active collecting after 2009, one of the first things I looked at was if there was a better, more economic way to store my collection. Stamp mounts are expensive, and the time taken to cut and mount stamps with them would not be the best use of my limited free time. I eventually settles on using Lighthouse Vario Stockpages. They are flexible, come in an arrange of pocket sizes (though I mostly use the 5 and 6 pocket pages. They fit most single stamps nicely. More recent stamp issues, especially se-tenant blocks, generally fit well in 4S pages). And at least in the USA, Vario pages are CHEAP, with retailers on Amazon and ebay regularly selling packs of 25 pages (that is 50 sides, since the pages are 2-sided) for under US$15. And as Vario pages fit in standard 3-ring binders (though Lighthouse also makes very sturdy binders that come with slipcase to keep the dust out. Online retailers sell these reasonably as well, I can source packs of 3 of the 3" D-Ring binders and slipcases that will hold approximately 90 pages for US$75 and I am currently using these to hold my collections). So its Vario for me all the way now, and I LOVE it!
But, you may ask, what about organizing the stamps on pages? Stockpages don't have illustrations! That raises an important question - what catalog do I use. Should I stick to Scott, which has made leaps and bounds in listing variety material in its Classic Specialized Catalog which, while not cheap, is definitely worth the investment, and I have a copy of the 2015 edition. However, having the ability to read French (among several languages) and being rather OCD about being able to have a space for every stamp, including varieties, there are also specialized catalogs to consider. Personally I LOVE specialized catalogs. I may not own all the varieties of every stamp ever issued, but I can at least leave spaces for them, and maybe one day I will win the lottery! For the French Empire (and France) the choice I made is the Maury catalogs. They are VERY detailed in terms of listing varietes, including a LOT of items NOT listed in Scott, from the dozens of overprint variations on the 1904 Guadeloupe surcharge provisionals to the several hundred Parcel Post stamps issued released by the colonial Algerian postal administration (which Scott does not list, though it does list the mainland French ones - why not Algeria's Scott hmmmm???) The Maury catalog splits the French empire into 4 different volumes organized primarily by region. They are a gold mine of information and it is how I organize my collection.
But how does that tell me where to put a stamp once I get it. To solve that conundrum I simply created excel diagrams with the Maury number (or Scott for post-independence issues Maury does not cover) in each cell. Vario pages have rows 215 mm long (height depends on number of rows per page). You can fit 8 standard 25x22mm definitives on a row using Lighthouse pages, while bigger stamps like the French colonial pictorial can fit 4 to 7 depending on the orientation of the stamp. So its just a matter of creating a "map" and then using it as I get stamps. I print the pages out and highlight the numbers that I acquire, as shown below for Senegal :
Easy-peasy as Jamie Oliver would say. So that is how I have my collections organized, it works very well for me though some will probably find it a bit too OCD especially when using specialized catalogs. Each to his or her own, the one rule in stamp collecting is that you collect the way that gives you the most pleasure, and be willing to try new ideas as your colleciton grows over time.
Senegal was a French colony that issued its own stamps starting in 1886. In 1944, the French decided to simplify the postal administration of their West African holding by issuing stamps inscribed -Afrique Occidentale Francaise- (French West Africa) for all eight of their West African colonies, including Senegal. The center of administration for French West Africa was at Dakar in Senegal, so I include these issues in my Senegal collection. Then the "Winds of Change" blew across Africa and in 1960 Senegal and the French Sudan formed the short-lived independent Federation of Mali before splitting into the independent nations of Senegal and Mali. Though catalogs generally list the issues of the Federation of Mali as the first issues of Mali, I personally place the Federation issues of 1959-1960 in with Senegal since the adminstrative center was in Dakar. So my Senegal album contains in reality four different postal administrations :
Colonial Senegal (1886-1944)
French West Africa (1944-1958)
Federation of Mali (1959-1960)
Independent Senegal (since 1960)
Of course, my academic background as a historian probably explains why I choose this kind of organization!
Speaking of albums, how do I store my collections. In my first philatelic life before I sold my collection to fund a business venture, I used traditional pages and mounts (I hate hinges with a passion, and would mount hinged stamps in mounts, figuring the poor hinged stamps had suffered enough damage already and did not need any more during my stewardship of their possesion. I had a complete set of Scott Internationals, Brown Vintage Reproduction pages for up to 1940, and then all the volumes up to 2001.
When I returned to active collecting after 2009, one of the first things I looked at was if there was a better, more economic way to store my collection. Stamp mounts are expensive, and the time taken to cut and mount stamps with them would not be the best use of my limited free time. I eventually settles on using Lighthouse Vario Stockpages. They are flexible, come in an arrange of pocket sizes (though I mostly use the 5 and 6 pocket pages. They fit most single stamps nicely. More recent stamp issues, especially se-tenant blocks, generally fit well in 4S pages). And at least in the USA, Vario pages are CHEAP, with retailers on Amazon and ebay regularly selling packs of 25 pages (that is 50 sides, since the pages are 2-sided) for under US$15. And as Vario pages fit in standard 3-ring binders (though Lighthouse also makes very sturdy binders that come with slipcase to keep the dust out. Online retailers sell these reasonably as well, I can source packs of 3 of the 3" D-Ring binders and slipcases that will hold approximately 90 pages for US$75 and I am currently using these to hold my collections). So its Vario for me all the way now, and I LOVE it!
But, you may ask, what about organizing the stamps on pages? Stockpages don't have illustrations! That raises an important question - what catalog do I use. Should I stick to Scott, which has made leaps and bounds in listing variety material in its Classic Specialized Catalog which, while not cheap, is definitely worth the investment, and I have a copy of the 2015 edition. However, having the ability to read French (among several languages) and being rather OCD about being able to have a space for every stamp, including varieties, there are also specialized catalogs to consider. Personally I LOVE specialized catalogs. I may not own all the varieties of every stamp ever issued, but I can at least leave spaces for them, and maybe one day I will win the lottery! For the French Empire (and France) the choice I made is the Maury catalogs. They are VERY detailed in terms of listing varietes, including a LOT of items NOT listed in Scott, from the dozens of overprint variations on the 1904 Guadeloupe surcharge provisionals to the several hundred Parcel Post stamps issued released by the colonial Algerian postal administration (which Scott does not list, though it does list the mainland French ones - why not Algeria's Scott hmmmm???) The Maury catalog splits the French empire into 4 different volumes organized primarily by region. They are a gold mine of information and it is how I organize my collection.
But how does that tell me where to put a stamp once I get it. To solve that conundrum I simply created excel diagrams with the Maury number (or Scott for post-independence issues Maury does not cover) in each cell. Vario pages have rows 215 mm long (height depends on number of rows per page). You can fit 8 standard 25x22mm definitives on a row using Lighthouse pages, while bigger stamps like the French colonial pictorial can fit 4 to 7 depending on the orientation of the stamp. So its just a matter of creating a "map" and then using it as I get stamps. I print the pages out and highlight the numbers that I acquire, as shown below for Senegal :
Easy-peasy as Jamie Oliver would say. So that is how I have my collections organized, it works very well for me though some will probably find it a bit too OCD especially when using specialized catalogs. Each to his or her own, the one rule in stamp collecting is that you collect the way that gives you the most pleasure, and be willing to try new ideas as your colleciton grows over time.
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